July 2019 – Science Integrity Digest

Weekly digest, July 23

Some interesting articles I came across in the past couple of weeks.

How a data detective exposed suspicious medical trials – David Adam – Nature
Anaesthetist John Carlisle has spotted problems in hundreds of research papers — and spurred a leading medical journal to change its practice.

‘Bad science’: Australian studies found to be unreliable, compromised – Liam Mannix – The Age
Hundreds of scientific research papers published by Australian scientists have been found to be unreliable or compromised, fuelling calls for a national science watchdog. For the first time, a team of science writers behind Retraction Watch has put together a database of compromised scientific research in Australia.

How to report misconduct to a journal

This post is based on a Twitter thread from April 2019, with some additional information. I have added some of my own reports and some UnSplash stock photos for illustrations.

I got several questions from other scientists who were interested learning how to report suspected misconduct or other irregularities in scientific papers. In this post, I will discuss how to do that.

Fabrication: The Diederik Stapel case

One of the most discussed case of fabricated data comes from the Netherlands. Diederik Stapel was a professor of Social Psychology at Tilburg University and the University of Groningen. Some of his research was featured on news sites, such as his Science paper that found that people discriminate more in messy environments or another (unpublished) study that thinking about meat made people less social.

PubPeer – a website to comment on scientific papers

If you are interested in scientific integrity, you will probably know PubPeer, a website where you can leave anonymous or signed comments on scientific papers.

PubPeer was launched in late 2012 by neuroscientist Brendon Stell and brothers Richard and George Smith, with Boris Barbour and Gabor Brasnjo acting as advisers. At the start, the founders and advisers were anonymous, but they revealed their identity in 2015.

Human Photosynthesis

Unfortunately, several angry Twitter users pointed out it was insensitive of me and irrelevant to mention the country where the Human Photosynthesis Study Center scientists are located. I am confused about this, but I do not want to be insensitive. It appears it is OK to mention most countries but not certain others. I will just try to continue to be an equal-opportunity science integrity detective.

Yesterday, Twitter user @Arroboso pointed out research on “Human Photosynthesis” through this tweet.

Of course I was curious. Last time I checked, humans are not capable of photosynthesis. Instead, I learned that humans are heterotrophs, organisms that rely on eating other organism to get their energy from.

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